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The Hohe Winde ski area in Beinwil (SO) wants to transport bikers in the future. The idea could catch on.
It was a short pleasure: In January of this year, the ski lift operators in Solothurn’s Schwarzbubenland were rejoicing. The Hohe Linde T-bar lift was open and there was snow. Hundreds of children and adults enjoyed the small descent in the Jura, from the mountain station at 1060 meters down to 760 meters.
But just a few days later the temperatures rose again and the snow melted away. The small ski area on the border of the cantons of Solothurn and Baselland is currently green. Winter sports are out of the question.
Legend:
Powder good: This is what the Hohe Winde ski lift looks like when there is really snow again. In January there were at least a few days with perfect snow sports conditions.
Facebook/Hohe Winde AG, ski lifts
Ski lift board chairman Pascal Grolimund is therefore considering alternatives, as the “bz Basel” reported. The lift should be in operation more often so that it is profitable. The idea of a bike park is obvious. People have been carrying them around for a long time, says Grolimund. “There is no bike park in this region yet and I am convinced that it would work.”
So far, bikers in mountain areas have mainly been transported up the mountain using gondolas or chair lifts. Of course, such an infrastructure does not exist in Beinwil. That’s why the T-bar lift should become a bike transporter.
The bike lift works
The idea: If there is no snow again, the lift transports mountain bikers instead of skiers. There should also be two to three downhill slopes, i.e. trails. “For downhillers, such a lift and descents are a necessity,” says Grolimund. Mountain bikes with electric motors could also be pulled by the lift, “this saves battery life”.
The idea is not entirely new, as a ski lift in the Bernese Jura north of Biel has already been converted into a mountain bike lift. With success, as Pierre-André Lerch from the Valbirse Bike Park tells us.
In the first season they pulled around 100,000 bikers up the slope. “The manufacturer says that with our small drag lift we are number two in the whole of Switzerland in terms of usage,” says Lerch, not without pride.
By setting up the bike park, the drag lift in the municipality of Valbirse in the Bernese Jura was saved. Around half a million francs were invested in the renovation. Now the lift turns from a ski lift into a bike lift in just a few simple steps.
A bike park takes a lot of planning
However, the path to get there is difficult, says Pierre-André Lerch. Just the negotiations with the farmers about the route of the bike trails would have taken a whole year. And the authorities also had a say.
I didn’t even know there were so many offices.
“I didn’t even know that there were so many offices in our cantons. There are grasshopper specialists and those responsible for flowers, hunting and forests,” says Lerch. He recommends that the ski lift operators in Solothurn’s Schwarzbubenland carefully prepare the project: “Our recipe was to be in close contact with these authorities and to constantly explain to them what exactly we are planning.”
Legend:
Requirements apply to bike trails, and conservationists and animal lovers in particular are sometimes critical of these. The picture shows a bike trail on Uetliberg in the canton of Zurich.
Keystone/Christian Beutler
The plans for the Hohe Winde ski lift are not yet fully developed. The journey will probably be long before bikers in the Solothurn Jura can cycle down to the valley on blue, red and black slopes. But the idea from the Bernese Jura will probably spread.
The constant lack of snow is a problem for many small ski areas at low altitudes. If you want to maintain the expensive infrastructure, you will probably have to find an alternative to winter operation.